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Entrepreneurs know success doesn't come easily but what surprises
many of them is how much work it is when it
finally does come.

When you are making something people will pay for, demand will
eventually jump. Then it's time to graduate to the level after
startup, which is scaling supply to meet demand. Don't
expect demand will scale up linearly. Be on your toes for
when it rains because it will definitely pour. You need to
be prepared to commensurately scale up supply when demand
scales up exponentially.

Here are seven insights into the challenge of soaring demand
from entrepreneurs who have met the challenge.

1. Fix the bottlenecks. When demand shoots
up out-of-the-blue, every bottleneck in your supply system will
be exposed terribly. Inevitably, it is the manual tasks that get
hit.

After 800Razors.com
started gaining traction, co-founder and president Philip
Masiello realized it took 16 man-hours to make 1,000 branded
package boxes but less than two hours to fill them all. By making
changes to the package mechanism, Philip's team got immediately
ready to take up larger orders.

2. Learn to delegate. Betsy, the
single-named founder of the Portland-based jewelry retail
store Betsy & Iya, had been hand-bending
wires herself for so long that she had a hard time
delegating to her employees when the time came for
her to start. Today, she channels that aspect of her
nature into maintaining high quality standards for her
designs.

“As each new maker has come on, I’m just as exacting and specific
about how I want the pieces made,” she said.

When you've handled all aspects of your business yourself for a
while, it's hard coming out of the “control freak” mode when
demand scales up. You need to adapt. Growth is personal, not just
business.

3. Invest in infrastructure. We have all
been taught to bootstrap our business but here comes a time when
an entrepreneur needs to bite the bullet and expand
infrastructure.

Peter Mann, founder and CEO of air purifier maker Oransi, found suddenly rising demand
inevitably brought stock-outs and delays filling orders. As a
starting up enterprise, these are not good signs. One of the
best decisions Peter made was to secure financing for his
company's own warehouse units. His customers never faced
delays again.

When Tracey Noonan, owner of Wicked Good Cupcakes, heard that her
company was accepted to appear on ABC SharkTank, she
immediately knew demand would probably rise. She invested
in two, large, 1200-square foot commercial kitchens and
storefronts. That helped her successfully maneuver the demand
spike when it eventually happened.

“Our options were to sink or swim. We chose to swim faster than
we ever knew we could. It was awesome!” she said.

4. Create larger awareness for
products. This might sound
counter-intuitive but that is what Julie Busha, CEO of
Slawsa, a condiment available in more
than 5,200 stores in North America, did when demand rose.

Julie realized an inventory system that allowed bulk
manufacturing is more cost-effective in the long term
for her food product business. She saw demand rise as an
opportunity to look farther into the future. Ultimately, Julie
decided to actively market her product on behalf of her retail
partners. That helped her sell her products faster, which
eventually justified her decision to invest in a bulk
manufacturing unit.

5. Do the math. By constantly monitoring
your growth and production rates you will better prepared to
take on the challenge of a demand spike when it arrives.

Michelle MacDonald is the founder of Sweet Note Bakery, a manufacturer of
gluten-free bagels in Philadelphia. Since hers was a B2B
business, Michelle's strategy was to always keep her
production capabilities higher than demand from current
accounts. When Michelle was one account away from her maximum
output, she had already hired a helper to make the bagels with
her.

6. Learn to prioritize. As demand scales
up, it is tempting to attend to customers and channels the
same as when you were a smaller business. But it's simply not
possible.

According to Jojo Hedaya, the co-founder of Unroll.me, it's extremely important to
prioritize.

"There’s always a million-and-one things you can do, and figuring
out which one of those things is number one is huge,'' he said.
"For example, we had thousands of users on a waiting list for
email providers we didn’t support. We couldn’t just support every
provider at once. It wouldn’t have worked as well. We had to
decide which email providers Unroll.me would support first so
that eventually each user would receive optimal service for
whichever email provider they're using.”

It is important that you are not too optimistic and adventurous
when a demand spike happens. Monica Wreede, owner of Accessory Connectz, ordered more than a
thousand sell sheets for a trade show she attended.

“(I) have more than half sitting here,'' she said. "I can not use
them anymore due to my price change. It devastates me every time
I look at them! It is money down the drain!”

Monica sums up the feelings of every entrepreneur when she said,
“As the orders flood in, it scares me because I never know if I
will have the dollars to purchase more supplies to fulfill
orders.”